We were lucky to catch up with Miles Squiers recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Miles thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?
Yes! I’d love to discuss this. I wanted to first say that my parents are why I do and love music.
As recently as this year I’ve been able to make an almost full-time living off of my creative work. From signing synchronization and licensing deals to working with as many up-and-coming artists that I can, my days are filled with creativity.
It’s taken about eight years to get to the position where I’m making money off of this profession. As many of my peers know, getting one yes takes 1 billion “no’s” to get your foot in the door.
To give you a brief summary of how it happened: it started in high school at Redwood high school in Larkspur, California. There I took a class called advanced performance workshop in which I was lucky enough to perform with some of the best businessmen and artists in the more recent music industry. To list a few Matthew Michna, Carlo Redl, Sylvie Cox, & John Van Liere, Hannah & Aaron Halford. I’m lucky that there are so many.
It wasn’t until my sophomore year of high school that I started releasing and recording my own music. A lot of the music I was turning out at this point in time was heavily inspired by what was going on with me in high school and the song influences and recommendations from my friends on what new music was hot. To listen to those early inspirations it would be GoldLink, Kanye West, Drake, Tyler, The Creator, Tame Impala, and 6lack.
It wasn’t until I got to (Belmont) that I felt comfortable in my own sound mixing and fusion and R&B rock rap and Pop. It was here at my university that I found an amazing group of talented people and friends of mine that allowed my vision to be shown and also edited. I’ve always loved collaborating with people. In my first week at Belmont, I met every single person that I would need to know to succeed in this industry. To shout out some of the Homies: Liangston, Jake Silver, Morgan Turpin, James Gerrard, Rupert McIntosh, Sam Mager, Seth (James) Masters, + many more. That time holds a very special place in all of our hearts. You can feel that warmth in my first project NightsLikeThese.
Miles, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I initially got into the music industry accidentally. As a kid, I tap danced and was in musical theater. I really wanted to pursue a career in directing or acting in more of the movie/play right direction. To be honest, what drew me away from this profession was my immediate impression of how toxic the drama culture was in our high school. In my freshman year, the senior class is one of the best drama groups I had seen at that point, but when they left, there were a lot of bad eggs. So then I decided to lean my focus into music.
As mentioned before, the music class I was taking allow me to release my own music for the first time as a sophomore. In 2017, I released two projects. The first was titled “Still Dreaming” and the second was titled, Young Adults.
To put it simply these projects are dated, which is why they are not on any streaming platforms anymore. There are also two more projects I release in high school titled Nightmare and Enigma that are also off-streaming platforms. This was me just trying to figure out my sound. Now, there are some gems but it wouldn’t be until my senior year of High School that I’d blossom into the artist I am today.
In 2018 I dropped two projects one titled Far From Form and another titled StudioFelony. Far From From you can listen to on all platforms right now; however, there are only 2 singles that were a part of StudioFelony out now. These are the albums that allowed me to experiment more with rap and trap. I was heavily inspired by Travis Scott’s Rodeo and Mac Miller’s Swimming and saw an opportunity to bridge the gap in sound between those two projects.
My next project was titled NightsLikeThese released in December 2019. I consider this to be my first studio album. with a lot of friends and cooks in the kitchen with this one, this album serves as a sort of time machine for a lot of my peers. My favorite songs from this project would be The Woods, SlowDown, and Don’tKnowLove.
The next major project I would make while in quarantine at the beginning of 2020. Though Covid was a very hard time, it allowed me to experiment with sounds alone. The year prior, I’d gotten used to having so many producers in a room that I had almost forgotten my own, solo thoughts. NOIR is the product of that: my own solo thoughts filtered through a love album.
If I were to rank all my projects from best to worst, NOIR is at the top. It is now my new benchmark for what an album needs to exceed to be releasable. It is also the project that I am the most impressed with in my own production it being all by one man behind a MacBook 3. It is also the album that has opened many doors for me in this music industry and has allowed me to meet and work with some of my best friends.
I am currently working on an album that I believe tops NOIR that will be released hopefully in early 2023. More on that later though.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on NFTs. (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)
To put it simply NFTs are the future. I wanna erase the conception that they are confusing to understand. In our lives, we already have NFTs in the form of vinyl, CDs, and cassettes. Even downloading a game is a sort of NFT.
The only difference is that we’re using coins and tokens to buy these items; like at an arcade. I’m actually in the development of a few NFTs of my own. I can’t wait for the lucky few that get to have some unreleased content!
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
In my personal opinion, for this industry to grow that needs to be a lot more co-signs. It’s starting to happen with some of the sharks at the top, but it’s not enough. Everybody benefits from a cosign. Help more people should be cosigning OutKast, ThreeSixMafia, Nirvana, and Jay-Z. Imagine if SoFaygo posted on his story that he likes a song off the Black Album. Right?!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://ffm.bio/milessquiers
- Instagram: @milessquiers
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/miles-squiers-0641b5234/
- Twitter: @SquiersMiles
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAwAIoY7wtVW-5L_TjDYOKw
- Other: TikTok: @milessquiers
Image Credits
Allie Pemantell, James Gerrard, Gabriel King, Will Cullen, Amiah Van Dyke, Jake Silver